Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Our garden this week

 


Rip van Winkle daffodils looking fantastic


We have loads of tubs and planters (over 100 !). Some are planted with veg and around 20 tubs of potatoes are sprutting up already. Some we save for tomatoes, around 10 large tubs are planted with summer bulbs, some have herbs, some soft fruits. I will show you them throughout the year. But our spring bulbs are now coming into their own and are looking gorgeous, a riot of colours, heights and textures. We have now started to put planters at the front and side of the house. They will be perfect for fuchsias and geraniums in the summer. 


A new alpine primula. These were bought from Morrisons for £1....would have been a fiver from the garden centre. It pays to keep your eye on Morrisons plants as we have found they have some stunning plants and so cheap. The best supermarket plants by far.

One of our outdoor orchids has made it through the winter and has thrown up two brand new shoots this week. This was bought from Morrisons for £10 last year. It was stunning when in flower. We gave it a 50/50 chance of survival and are very pleasantly surprised !


A lovely planter that brightens up the front of the house.



Snakes Head Fritillary












Tomato plants in the propagator in the kitchen window. These have now been potted on and are in the sun up the hallway, the propagator being full again......we have to form a que to get stuff in there in the spring. We do have two progagators, a large one that Tom bought from the garden centre that is brilliant and one that was reduced in Lidl that is not so good (but better than nothing)


A bed of onions and garlic. We have two full beds and plenty of buckets of spring onion seeds on the go. We can never have too many onions. We have grown Centurion this year, a new one for us. 



Stuff is starting to sprut ! Its a time of year that we love, when things start to grow. We have a few plastic covers that we dot around to warm things up a bit and give plants a helping hand. We have a brand new raised bed this year, especially for tomatoes. We are going to treat ourselves to a new shed once we are back from Arizona (going birding!), that will give us room at the bottom of the garden for Simon to build himself a new large greenhouse. A good project for the summer !

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

A few from last week

 

Blackthorn looking good in flower


Wild Violets



Terrapin on our local nature reserve !



Goldeneye


Toad spawn - gets less and less each year


Toad



Scarlet Elf Cups looking good, some massive ones this year


Our first Coltsfoot of the year


Chiffchaff


Bullfinch

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Alpine Swifts, Chapel Six Marshes, Lincs

 



A hell of a journey to Chapel with closed roads, detours  and a speed camera that may or may not be 3 points for Karen !! Fingers crossed xx  We saw one swift as soon as we got into the car park so the stress was off. Another car arrived with a couple of birders in that we said looked familiar.......it turned out that we had been to Georgia and Armenia with them......a small world and lovely to catch up. Then up to the other car park where we had the swifts at hedge height many times, excellent views. A very good day, the drive home a bit slower ! 

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Cobra Warrior, RAF Waddington, Lincs

Another early morning start and off to Waddington to watch another day's exercise. Need to set off early as a good viewing space at the fenceline is like gold dust ! So, breakfast was had by our ladders but with nice folk to chat to the time soon passed and jet engines could be heard starting !  The Red Arrows went up first with a 5 ship followed by the Belgians in their F16's, the Finnish in their F18's and the Indian Air Force in their Mirage 2000's.  Ear splittingly fantastic !!
















































FANTASTIC !!!

and one from the fence, quite a crowd for 9am !